2010 SO16

2010 SO₁₆ is a near-Earth asteroid discovered by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer space telescope. The orbit was described by Christou Apostolos and David Asher at the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland.^[1] The object has a magnitude of 20.7 and is several hundred meters in diameter.

2010 SO₁₆ has a horseshoe orbit that allows it to stably share Earth's orbital neighborhood without colliding with it. It is one of a handful of known asteroids with an Earth-following orbit, a group that includes 3753 Cruithne, and the only known asteroid in an horseshoe orbit with Earth. It is, however, neither an Aten asteroid nor an Apollo asteroid because the semi-major axis of its orbit is neither less than nor greater than 1 AU, but oscillates between approximately 0.996 and 1.004 AU, with a period of about 350 yr.^[1] In its ~350 yr horseshoe cycle, it never approaches Earth more closely than about 0.15 AU, alternately trailing and leading.

According to various simulations 2010 SO₁₆ will remain in this orbit for at least 120,000 years and possibly for more than a million years, which is unusually stable compared to other similar objects.^[2] One reason for this stability is its low orbital eccentricity, .^[1]

A precovery of 2010 SO₁₆ may have been located in a 2005 Spitzer Space Telescope image.^[3]

See also

• 3753 Cruithne – a horseshoe companion of the Earth
• 2006 RH120 – a small asteroid that sometimes temporarily gets caught in Earth orbit
• 2002 AA29 – a horseshoe companion of the Earth
• Natural satellite

References

External links

• JPL SO16 orbit simulation